Impacts of the Influencers' Characteristics on Purchase Intention: A Case of Chinese Live Commerce

The rapid development and popularity of online media technology, live commerce platforms have emerged and are rapidly developing. Live commerce has become not only a simple form of entertainment, but also an important means for consumers to obtain information and to communicate. Nowadays, the e-commerce live broadcast jointly created by live broadcast and e-commerce has created a lot of attention. Especially with the rapid development of self-media, there are many influencers in the live commerce. These influencers sharing and disseminating product infonnation will have an impact on the consumer's choice, and then influence the consumer's purchase intention. This dissertation focuses on the influence of influencers on consumers' consumption choices of goods in live commerce. Therefore, this study clarifies the concept of influencer and consumers' purchase intention by sorting out the prior studies on influencers and their four characteristics namely professionalism, credibility, attractiveness and interactivity. Furthermore, this study introduces two mediating variables, flow and perceived value, and constructs a corresponding research model. Samples were collected by means of questionnaires and empirical analysis was conducted using SPSS 23.0 and Smart PLS 4.0(Structural Equation Package) to verify the hypotheses. The following conclusions are drawn. First, professionalism has no effect on flow thus, H1-1 is rejected; attractiveness has no effect on flow thus, H1-3 is also rejected. HI is partially adopted. Second, professionalism has no effect on perceived value thus, H2-1 is rejected. H2 is partially adopted. Third, flow positively influences purchase intention thus, H3 is adopted. Fourth, perceived value positively influences purchase intention thus, H4 is adopted.